Description

On its course to the Alpha Quadrant, the U.S.S. Voyager is attacked by an unknown ship and is transported to a graveyard of ships with a giant space station in the middle. The player is Ensign Alex Munro (male or female, according to the player's choice), second in command of the newly formed Hazard Team, an elite force of Voyager security personnel. It's up to the player and your team to find out why the Voyager was brought here and to find a way to escape. To do so, they will have to complete several missions on different ships and space stations.

Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force is a first-person shooter that uses the Quake III engine. The different types of missions range from pure combat to stealth missions. The enemies include many well-known Star Trek races like the Borg or the Klingons, but also other alien races and creatures invented specifically for this game. All the weapons have a futuristic design, ranging from the low-damage hand phaser to stasis weapons and grenade launchers. The weapons either gradually recharge ammunition automatically, or require ammunition that can be collected from other weapons or terminals.

Though the player directly controls only Munroe, up to three teammates usually accompany him (or her) during the missions and fight the enemies, controlled by the AI. Scripted events and cutscenes often involve actions committed by these teammates. When not on a mission, Munroe can explore the space ship, talking to characters directly or overhearing their conversations with each other. A few decisions can be made by the player during the course of the game, which may influence the subsequent events.

Forums

Trivia

Actors

When the game was first released, Jeri Ryan wasn't available to do the voice-overs, and a sound-alike was used. All other TV cast members contributed their own voice to their cyber-counterparts. Jeri's voice was added in the latest official V1.2 patch.

Devon Raymond, the woman who does the voice for Alexandria Munroe, also appears in the Voyager TV series finale as a cadet.

AI

In the Gamasutra Postmortem for Elite Force, the developers note the challenges behind tweaking the PC-controlled Elite Force members' AI. Initially, the Elite Force was too good, killing most of the enemies and leaving little for the player to do. Then they made the team less effective, but this resulted in the enemies killing them off unless the player protected them. The solution was to have the Elite Force be less effective, but have the enemies target the player more than the rest of the team.

Characters

While most of the hazard team characters were invented specifically for the game, Chell the paranoid bolian is actually a minor character from the Voyager TV show who appears in the episodes "Repression" and "Learning Curve". He's also played by the same guy who does his voice in the game.

Cut content

As told by project lead Brian Pelletier, originally if you left Foster to be assimilated by the Borg, he would appear in the end to help you fight the Forge Boss (in fact, the Borg were supposed to help you anyway) however this final team-up was scrapped from the game at the last moment because of time constraints and AI problems, so Foster had to go.

Desktop

The game actually installs two icons to your desktop: one for the single-player campaign, and a separate icon for the multi-player Holomatch.

Development

Because of Paramount licensing requirements, The game was developed so none of the TV characters would be killed. Raven opted to create the Elite Force in compliance of the requirement.

Friendly fire

If you fire on a fellow officer, you'll quickly find yourself being targeted by numerous other personnel. If you actually survive the attack for 30 seconds, you are shown to be in the brig, being lectured by a cast member. The cast members actually follow a list, so if you quicksave before you kill a shipmate, you can hear all the crew members lecture you about your criminal actions.

References

Some members of the Elite Force are named after employees of Raven. For example, Rick Biessman is named after Eric Biessman, who did Holomatch Level Design for the game. Other examples include Odell, Foster and Munro.

The alternate federation you encounter mid-game is taken from the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of the original Star Trek series, in which captain Kirk got trapped in an alternate universe where the federation is actually an evil dictatorial conglomerate.

Sexuality

Whether you play as a man or a woman, you end up being flirted with by a female character. This is almost certainly an oversight by the programmers, and is ironic as the Star Trek lineage has usually shied away from having overtly homosexual characters. The series' original creator Gene Roddenberry was reportedly in favor of the idea, note that the various Star Trek series have often been ahead of their time in having a multiracial cast. Other members of the staff (especially Executive Producer Rick Berman) had ruled against diverse orientations.